


taking a shot in the dark

by newsbypostcard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Past shenko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 12:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is Garrus still on board with any campaign that might break institutional rules along the way to the point of recklessness? Hell, yes. Is his cynicism nevertheless softened? Maybe. Either his time on the Normandy SR-1 had fundamentally altered his approach to leadership, or his time in the interim had done. </p><p>Call it the Shepard effect, but he’s pretty sure the chain started with her either way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	taking a shot in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Another one of those things written 18 months ago that I'm finally polishing and kicking off my drive.
> 
> This fic alludes to the encounter between Shepard and Alenko on Horizon during ME2 as though Kaidan was romanced in ME1. Shepard and Garrus discuss it, but neither scenes from Horizon nor Alenko himself appear in this fic.

  


* * *

  


“What is it with you and ‘old times’, Vakarian?”

Garrus turns slowly to regard Jacob with some combination of suspicion and surprise. “This coming from anywhere in particular?” he asks.

“Every time something that comes up from your first mission with Shepard, you go out of your way to remind her that you were there,” Jacob says. “You know she probably remembers all that better than you, right? She’s been unconscious for the last two years, that stuff was like yesterday to her.”

Garrus stares into the bottom of his weapons locker and clenches his jaw to try to subdue a smile. “I didn’t realize I was being so vocal,” he says delicately.

Jacob shakes his head and chuckles. “Man, that is some of the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

“So I say what’s on my mind. Sue me.”

“And what’s constantly on your mind is your time with Shepard?”

“I --” Garrus frowns. “Not _constantly._ ”

Jacob’s ongoing amusement leaves Garrus bristling. “Why are you concerned about it, anyway?” Garrus asks him. He aggressively removes a component of his sniper rifle as he says it, in case Jacob forgets who carries the big guns around here.

“It’s just something I noticed.” Jacob holds his hands out on either side, lips quirking into a smile. “Really means a lot to you, huh? Your first mission with Shepard?”

“I, uh…” Garrus chuckles low in his throat, involuntarily, and he resigns himself at last to actually having this conversation. “I guess it’s the first time I felt I had a purpose that really made sense,” he admits. “The military provided structure, and C-Sec was -- fine, I guess. But I’ve never found following rules as easy as I find following Shepard.” He shrugs. “She doesn’t always make the same decisions I’d make, but she always makes them for reasons I understand. I’ve never met someone so steadfast in her understanding of a situation, and I have nothing but respect for that. Working for her beats working for any organization.” He stares into the chamber of his gun and accepts the cloth Jacob throws him. “So if I keep going back to that mission, it’s because it changed everything for me. I’ll never do anything but follow my gut again. All that’s because of her.”

Garrus looks up to see Jacob still grinning. “Oh, man,” he says, arms crossed.

“What?”

“You’ve got it _that bad_ , huh?”

Garrus blinks. “What? No. I admire Shepard, that’s all.”

“Sure. She just gives you purpose, and direction, and those warm, fuzzy feelings.”

Garrus pauses for only just too long. “I don’t--”

“Describe Shepard.”

“I’m not going to _describe--_ ”

“Describe her,” Jacob insists, grin drawing yet more broadly over his face.

He scowls. “She’s a human,” Garrus says slowly, “very determined, hates geth...”

Jacob shakes his head. “Physically.”

Garrus leans in what he hopes is a casual manner against the nearest vertical surface. “She, um … you know. Is a human woman. About yay high. With … features. There’s a -- a waist, and, et cetera. Her eyes are, well, they’re clear, and also they’re … equivalently placed on either side of her face.”

Jacob grins widely, clearly suppressing a laugh. “When she’s holding a sniper rifle?”

He feels his eyes glaze over, his heart rate speeding up. “Well, that’s just not fair.”

“I see. Well, listen.” Jacob places a hand on Garrus’ shoulder. “Take it from me, Garrus: you don’t want to get busy with your boss.”

“I don’t? I mean, _I don’t_. I mean…” He buries his face in his hands. “Ah, hell.”

Jacob continues to have a great time playing with Garrus’ emotions, if the look on his face is any indication. “Seriously, though,” Jacob says when he’s finished chuckling, “just do yourself a favour and write her off as an option at the outset. Imagine her with a sniper rifle in your own quarters all you want, but you gotta know she’s in a league of her own.”

“Believe me, Taylor, I’m all too aware of that,” Garrus agrees. “But regardless, you misunderstand me. I admire Shepard, but I don’t … uh.” He shakes his head hard and tries again. “It’s just that -- I actually just think she’s -- just --” He trails off, uselessly, infuriatingly, and gestures into the air to indicate his defeat.

“Uh-huh,” says Jacob. “You’re saying that when you think about ‘old times,’ Shepard’s not in the picture every time? You’re not constantly thinking about Shepard in battle, Shepard leading the charge, making the hard decisions, giving commands?” Jacob waves a finger in the air. “Can you take her out of these images you have of the _good old days_ and tell me that they are otherwise in any way unique from any of your other missions? Or are these memories actually formed around Shepard, completely, every single time?”

Garrus says nothing, only shuts his eyes and leans his head against the nearest surface. “You’re seriously damaging my plausible deniability here, Taylor,” he mutters.

Jacob slams the locker shut and leans against it, still looking entertained. “Listen, I get it. I think you spent two years trying to find your way after she died, and maybe you’re realizing you’ve only found it now that she’s back. She needs someone to believe in her the way you do, so I think that’s great. But you’d better be certain if you go in, here, man, because from her perspective, you’ve been there more or less all along. She might just have the strength and the skill required to beat the Collectors, but she needs her team, and as far as she’s concerned I think you’ve gotta be on it.” He slaps Garrus on the shoulder. “If you can’t write her off as an option, at least be committed to staying on her team -- for both your sakes.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Garrus replies, very truthfully, feeling vaguely bewildered.

Jacob nods. “Good,” he says, and then he leaves Garrus alone.

Garrus waits a moment before turning to call after him, voice echoing through the shuttle bay. “It’s not like I think for a second I have a shot,” he says.

“If I know anything about you, Garrus, it’s that you’ll take the shot anyway,” Jacob calls back without turning.

Garrus stares uselessly at the floor for a solid minute, unmovingly, and then finishes cleaning his sniper rifle, all the while trying to think about anything _other_ than how Shepard would look holding it.

  


* * *

  


The thing of it is -- Jacob isn’t entirely _wrong_.

Shepard had walked into his lair on Omega, just as he’d known she couldn’t and yet somehow expected she would anyway. An impossible saving grace in what he’d thought had been his last moments alive? Typical Shepard. And he’d managed to keep it together at first -- held up a finger, taken out the last insurgent, his gaze unwavering and his hands steady. 

But in the moments that had followed, as they’d exchanged greetings and Garrus had done his best to sound detached and capable, he’d caught his gaze lingering. She’d looked at him with a stark, honest expression as they’d strategized how to get out; and wasn’t it always the eyes that got him, in the end?

“I’ll stay up here,” he’d hastened, trying to cover, and pulled his exhausted corpse to the other side of the room in an effort to put some physical distance between them so he could get his focus back. “I can do a lot of damage from this vantage point. You?” Had his voice changed in pitch? “You can do what you do best.” 

His eyes caught again when she looked at him while unsheathing her assault rifle, her determination outstripping his own; and he’d realized, looking into her eyes steeled with focus, that it was this spirit he’d been looking for and not finding for the better part of two years without her.

“Just like old times, Shepard,” he’d swooned.

He would’ve sworn it was the lack of sustenance that was at fault, but he would have been lying.

  


* * *

  


The years has molded them both. Garrus has had his share of near-death experiences, become attached to and lost a crew he’d genuinely cared for; and when Shepard had found him, it hadn’t taken him long to realize he was suddenly able to empathize with her much more easily than he remembered doing on the SR-1. Is he still on board with any campaign that might break institutional rules along the way to the point of recklessness? Hell, yes. Is his cynicism nevertheless softened? Maybe. Either his time on the SR-1 fundamentally altered his approach to leadership, or his time in the interim had done. 

Call it the Shepard effect, but he’s pretty sure the chain started with her either way.

So when they talk, Garrus tries not to be bothered with the fact that he can practically feel himself turn partially into gelatin. His turian commanders would be shuddering in their sleep to know the muscles in his face forcibly relax in awe pretty much every time Shepard walks into a room -- but they aren’t here, and Shepard’s twice the general compared with any turian he’d ever known besides.

Fortunately, no one on a boat full of humans knows turian physiology enough to be able to notice when these reactions _happen_ to him. No one needs to know that he is, even after all this time apart, unwilling to follow anyone in the universe -- apart from this one squishy human, who could bring him to his knees just by asking politely, provided she was also holding a sniper rifle.

No one needs to know that he finds pleasure in the thought.

No one needs to know.

Not even Shepard.

  


* * *

  


So Jacob sees through him. So what. One person. Not the end of the world.

It’s after Horizon that Miranda, somehow, also clues in.

It’s Garrus’ fault. He’s standing in the mess, leaning against the wall with crossed arms, frowning at the corner where Alenko used to stand in the SR-1, when Miranda walks by and stops to regard him suspiciously. 

“What’s up with you?” she asks.

Garrus gives her a hesitant, sidelong glance. “Nothing,” he says, too causally.

“Is this about Horizon?”

“What?” Garrus scoffs. “No.”

“This is about Horizon,” she decides anyway, and leans against the door to medbay.

“Why would it be about Horizon?”

“Shepard,” she says shortly.

“What about her?”

“The fight?”

“I’m not sure I’d call Shepard running damage control while Alenko throws a fit a _fight_ , exactly.”

Miranda stares at him. “I was talking about the Collectors, but all right, sure, let’s start _there._ ”

Garrus stares blankly in recognition of his own idiocy. “Ugh,” he says, rubbing awkwardly at his forehead. He used to possess some stealth ability, surely.

“Now why would you be preoccupied about her fight with _Alenko_?”

He flinches. “Can we... not?”

“I’m fair sure we must,” Miranda insists.

Garrus shuts his eyes and sighs, but eventually looks to the ceiling and shuffles his feet. “I just know she must be reeling from that,” he says, with an air of unconvincing removal. “Hard pill to swallow, after what she’s been through.”

“They were an item, I gather?”

“Oh, yeah. I never really cared for the guy one way or the other, but Shepard saw something in him. Now watching them argue today, hearing her talking about ‘old times’ only for him to turn his dumb ass on her and walk away… I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “Walking away from the Commander’s not something you do lightly. I just want her to be…” He falters; tries again. “I wish he’d given her the benefit of the doubt. For her sake. That’s all.”

Miranda squints at him. “Hmm.”

“I was really just standing here thinking she can’t be feeling too great right now when you came by,” he continues, uncomfortable under her gaze. “Years have passed for him, but she hasn’t been back that long. Throw in the fact that the Collectors are after her, and…” His mandibles click. “To watch him turn his back on her like that… anyway.” Garrus waves a hand in the air, hoping to clear some of the cobwebs from his mind in the process. “I was trying to figure out if there was something I could do to improve her outlook, Lawson. That’s all. Nothing worth noting.”

Miranda seems to barely subdue a smirk. “Only time and kicking arse can really help Shepard in a situation like this,” she advises him.

“Maybe.” He shuffles a foot against the ground. “But there must be _something_.” 

“I don’t think--”

“I’ve been working on some calibrations for the ship’s defenses that I haven’t told her about. Maybe she’d want to hear about them. That might cheer her up, don’t you think? In the theme of kicking ass?”

Miranda only gives him an indulgent look.

“Yeah. I’m gonna go… get the info.” He pushes himself off the wall.

“What if she just wants some time to herself?”

Garrus waves a distracted hand and subdues a would-be sprint toward the Main Battery. “This’ll only take a minute.”

He hears Miranda’s breathy laughter behind him, but he doesn’t care. Alenko shit aside, knowing that the Normandy will soon be better prepared against the Collectors could only do to help. 

He grabs the info from atop a stack of crates and half-jogs back to the lift.

  


* * *

  


Garrus straightens his posture just slightly before knocking.

“Come in,” comes Shepard’s voice from the other side of the door.

He breezes into the room, something of a saunter in his step. “Shepard,” he begins, beating back a roguish grin, “I wanted to--”

Shepard turns slowly in her chair to face him -- and she looks _exhausted._

Her hair tumbles loosely over her shoulders, not tucked away in the usual tight bun she usually wears on missions. She’s curled into the chair, one leg propped over the other; and combined with the weariness in her eyes, the effect of seeing her bent in half, looking so close to _small_ , is entirely unnerving.

Garrus’ smile drops immediately off his face, something working awkwardly in his throat, even as she gives a tired, gentle smile of welcome at the sight of him. 

“Garrus,” she says. “What can I do for you?”

His joints do that gelatin thing, again.

“I’m interrupting,” he manages eventually.

“Not at all,” she replies. 

Her hair is longer than he’d expected -- but then, Garrus hadn’t expected _any_ of this. It’s not that she looks _off-guard_ , but she is certainly _off-duty_ ; her back is still stalk-straight in her chair, her body ever the persistent image of attention, but so, too, does her head rest against the back of her chair, her hands clasped loosely around one bended knee, as she watches him through narrowed eyes that weigh heavy with fatigue.

“I just wanted to…” Garrus says; but the sentence falters in his throat. There isn’t an ounce of tension left in his body, with Shepard looking at him like this. “Shepard,” he redirects. “Are you okay?”

She smiles; something tired and bittersweet. “Yeah, Garrus, I’m okay.” She nods, as though to better convince them both. “Hell of a day. That’s all.”

Garrus nods his understanding. The OSD hangs in one hand, at once both heavy and forgotten as he assesses Shepard from as much of a distance as he can manage. 

It’s just that -- he’s always known Shepard is hot as hell, but he’s never noticed her to be _beautiful_ before.

“Can I do anything?” he asks. His voice even _sounds_ deflated.

“Nothing to be done,” Shepard replies. She rubs her hands over her eyes and shifts herself to a more alert position, as though aware Garrus has been disarmed by her vulnerability. “I think my adrenaline’s just worn off for the first time in months tonight. Don’t know when I’ve ever felt this tired.”

“You should rest,” he says. That strange tenderness about him, again.

“Soon.” Shepard’s lip quirks with something like amusement at his concern. “What is it you need, Garrus?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. “Nothing,” he says, finally, with finality. “I’ll get someone else to help with the … thing. It’s not important.”

But by then it’s too late; she’s already moving, pulling her hair easily back into a bun at the top of her head. “I’m always available to help my crew,” she says; and the stiffness seems to return to her limbs as she rises, as though her bones have grown within her anew.

Garrus steps immediately forward. “Shepard, you know I’d never for a second doubt your ability in the field,” he begins hastily, pushing her gently back toward the chair with his hand set gently on her shoulder, “but since we’re off-duty, I’m gonna say this to you straight: Sit the hell down, Commander. You look like you’re gonna pass out if you spend another second on your feet today.” 

Shepard stares at him, and he gives her shoulder what he hopes is a comforting squeeze before retreating. “Relax, Shepard,” Garrus gravels. “It’s under control.”

It’s another stubborn moment of staring, but then she blinks heavily and collapses back into the chair despite herself. “All right,” she says; then she gestures at him as she curls her feet beneath her once again. “ _Supposed_ to be off-duty,” she argues, hand waving before his armour.

“Ah, yeah.” He shifts nervously and steps back. “Never got a chance to change. Was just, ah, doing some calibrations when I thought I’d deal with this minor -- you know, really a non-issue, and then I was gonna turn in myself.” He crosses his arms. “It _has_ been a long day, Shepard.”

The breath forces its way out of her chest in a way that seems involuntary, her eyes fluttering briefly shut. “If you’re sure it can wait, Garrus…”

“Tomorrow,” he says, batting a free hand. “Or the day after. Next week! After we beat the Collectors. Whenever, Shepard, _really_. Just do us all a favour and get a solid few hours sleep. We’re only as good as our Commander in chief, and we’re not gonna get far if you’re dead on your feet.”

“You’d find a way,” she replies lazily, resting a fist against her mouth as she yawns.

“No, Shepard,” Garrus says, suddenly dead sincere. “I’m not sure we would.”

She blinks at him, expression first stunned and then evolving into grateful; and Garrus takes that as his cue to leave. “Pleasant dreams, Shepard,” he offers as lightly as he can manage; and then he backs toward the door before he somehow fucks this all up.

“You too, Garrus,” she replies warmly. Her hand rises to remove the elastic out of her hair again as he slinks away; and it’s three steps later, with Garrus still stalled in the doorway to her quarters, that a thought suddenly clenches at his chest and won’t let go.

“Shepard?” he calls back, tone strangled.

“Garrus?” she replies.

Garrus quickly steps back into her quarters, faces her head-on, and stares her dead in the face when he says it. “Alenko’s an idiot,” he breathes, tone imploring her to know what he really means by it.

The surprise forces the corners of her mouth downward, her hair falling loosely over her face, gravity still working it out of its erstwhile bunlike state; but her contemplation flickers after only a moment, and she turns her face toward the ground as the genuine smile bursts open across her face.

“That’s kind of you, Garrus,” she begins, while Garrus’ heart threatens to patter its way out of his body. Shepard cocks her head. “Sort of,” she amends upon reflection. “But to be honest with you, I... get where he’s coming from.” She waves a hand in the air. “It’s been a long couple of years, and seeing me alive after so long of believing me dead can’t have been easy on anyone. You telling me you didn’t have a reaction when you saw me again?”

Garrus remembers it with perfect clarity: The N7 emblem seen through the scope of his rifle, like a beacon of sanctity in what he thought were his final moments; the hope that had clutched at his heart that Shepard might’ve inexplicably, impossibly survived all this time; the understanding that it could’ve been countless other people with the same designation; the absolute conviction that it was Shepard, anyway.

Shepard’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “I’m sorry,” she says; “that was presumptuous.”

“No, I reacted all right; but I also waited long enough to hear what the hell had happened to you instead of assuming that you -- _you,_ Shepard! -- had spent the last however many months actively deceiving not only your team, but the entire universe, just for the sake of working for some possibly corrupt but infinitely wealthy supremacist corporation.” Garrus shakes his head and crosses his arms. “Does Alenko know _anything_ about you? He either understands that you’re here for a damned good reason and is choosing to ignore it for the sake of his own self-righteousness, or he actually doesn’t get that you’re loyal to _causes_ rather than organizations. Either way, Shepard, he doesn’t deserve--” 

Garrus cuts off only just in time before saying ‘you’. “The time of day,” he finishes instead, diverting his eyes to a point on the wall with a clearing of his throat.

The silence that follows seems more hopeful than reproachful. “I see what you’re saying,” Shepard says eventually, and Garrus returns his gaze to her to find her too distracted to have noticed his near-gaffe. “But, Garrus, I -- ugh.” She brings a hand up to rub aggressively at her forehead. “I’m gonna regret saying this, but I’m gonna say it anyway. This stays between us, okay?”

Garrus nods once, hitches one foot over the other, and leans one shoulder attentively against the nearest wall. He’s all too happy for the opportunity to try miserably to look casual again, and to hear what’s on Shepard’s mind, and -- just fucking kill him already. “From the second I found out I’d been out of commission for two years, I’ve been trying to move on from this,” Shepard says, gesturing at the picture of Alenko propped on her desk as Garrus’ focus returns. “I’d assumed he’d moved on long ago. Half of me expected to find him married, working a desk job somewhere on Earth, maybe expecting a child. Even if he did defy expectations by staying in the fight, it hadn’t changed for me that he might’ve still moved on.

“But the thing that’s getting me now,” Shepard continues, “is that it seems like he took an order to try to defend Horizon against the Collectors -- primarily based on a rumour that I might still be alive.” She looks up at Garrus with a bewildered expression. “It looked like he doubted it was possible up until the moment he actually saw me -- and I’m not totally sure he believes even now that I am who I say I am -- but he took the assignment anyway, on the _outside chance_ I might’ve shown up, despite that he thought it was impossible.”

She raps her fist lightly against her desk, the rest of her body collapsing in on itself with the force of tension. “I’ve been trying to move on, too -- I have. But maybe I took the mission on Horizon because Kaidan was there -- same as he did for me. And maybe that makes fools of the both of us.”

Garrus blinks his surprise and shakes his head. “We were on Horizon because the Collectors needed to be eliminated,” Garrus reminds her. “You’d have gone down whether Alenko was there or not.”

Shepard nods, slowly, staring at some point on the floor between them. “You’re right,” she agrees, eventually. “Primarily, we were. But secondarily, I -- hoped to see him again. Maybe I even wanted to try to bring him on board.” She waves a hand in the air. “I’m just -- tired of trying unsuccessfully to move past this. I’m trying. _I am trying_. But there we both were, all the same.”

Garrus watches her move stressfully within the chair, and narrowly restrains himself from stepping toward her. “I seem to recall you killing several dozen gang members to get to me as well, Shepard,” he says, instead of moving, “on the off-chance you could recruit me to your cause, even before you knew who ‘Archangel’ was.” His face pulls into what he hopes is obvious as a sympathetic smile when she looks at him. “It doesn’t detract from your character that you’d do the same for Alenko just because you have a history with him.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it. “You have a point,” she mutters -- and then she looks up at him with a gaze of the utmost clarity, self-reflection driving all exhaustion from her eyes, and he tries to keep his breathing normal. “But the fact is that we, Kaidan and I, were _both_ manipulated into a position that compromised the safety of a colony -- because we were looking for each other, even as we were trying to get over each other.” She shakes her head. “You heard as well as I did -- the Collectors are _looking_ for me, Garrus. Actively. Who knows if Horizon was targeted because I was there, because Kaidan was there, because we’re on record as having been involved?” She shakes her head and slams Alenko’s picture down on the desk in frustration. “It’s worse than you’re saying. It’s not about my recruitment numbers. But thanks for making the effort.”

Garrus watches her shift into a cross-legged position. “That’s not on you, and you know it,” he tells her, when she meets his eye again. “None of this is. Not the Collectors landing on Horizon, and not Alenko’s anger-fueled bullshit.”

Shepard props one elbow on her desk and covers some horribly ironic smile that’s spreading over her lips. “Over _two years,_ Garrus,” she gravels, “and that stubborn fucking excuse for a human being is still angry with me for dying on him.”

Garrus cracks a smile, despite himself. “He’ll get over that.”

“Will he? I have my doubts.” She clears her throat of emotion and shifts restlessly. “It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that unless I get my emotions in check, I’ll keep commanding at the expense of the cause. More colonies will be threatened. More Collectors will get sent my way, just because we can’t get the fuck over ourselves.” She shakes her head contemplatively. “It’s good, that we had to go through this,” she says, mostly to herself. “It’s good to know all this. It’s just a terrible fucking feeling.”

Garrus watches her, tries to subdue whatever is bubbling in his torso. “I’m sorry this is happening, Shepard,” he gravels eventually.

She waves into the air. “Rest assured, Garrus; none of this will affect my command.” She rests the heel of her hand against her hairline and looks at Garrus with a bittersweet smile. “I just need a night to feel like shit about it so I can forget about it.”

“I wasn’t for a second worried about your command, Shepard,” he says, with all the sincerity he can muster.

In the silence that follows, she gives him a sidelong glance that he can’t quite decipher -- something like appreciation, maybe full of gratitude. They smile at each other from across the room before he figures out that this is his cue to go; and he pushes off the wall and stands tall, rolling his shoulders in his armour. “I’m gonna ask this one more time,” he says, “and then I swear I’m gonna get out of your hair, Shepard: Do you need anything?”

Shepard seems to think this over. “You got a stash of booze I don’t know about?” she jokes.

Garrus opens his mouth, then closes it again. “How much will the truth result in its confiscation?” he asks carefully.

Shepard chuckles, some low thing deep in her chest, and Garrus feels it in every one of his joints. “This isn’t an Alliance ship, Garrus, and even if it was I’d have no authority over you,” she says. “Keep it.”

His mouth quirks. “I can -- bring you something,” he says. His palms feel oddly clammy, as though objecting to the fact that he actually had the guts to make that suggestion.

Shepard looks tempted, but then her expression slides sideways again into exhaustion. “No. You’re right. I’ll be useless until I get some sleep.”

“I’m... fairly certain that’s not what I said.”

“It’s close enough.” She waves him away toward the door. “Dismissed, Vakarian. Save me a drink for the next shitty day. I somehow doubt they’ll be in short supply.”

Garrus nods; says, “Yes, ma’am;” and then he salutes, just to see the annoyed glint in her eye as he turns away. 

“Goodnight, Garrus,” she says to his retreating back.

“He’s still an idiot,” he calls behind him as he leaves.

“Your position is noted,” she replies tiredly.

As the doors to her quarters shudder closed behind him, Garrus gives himself a few seconds to lean against the wall, eyes closed, to let his heart run roughshod over his existence for as short a time as he can possibly allow; then, with a sigh, he weaves his fingers together behind his neck and walks slowly into the lift, registering on some level that the OSD he walked in with is still balancing on the edge of Shepard’s desk.

When she returns it to him the following morning, already full of annotations on the suggested upgrades to the Normandy, Garrus manages to take it only with a gentle smile -- and he _does not swoon_.

  


* * *

  


In the end, he has his own crisis of sorts to sift through.

It isn’t like it _entertains_ him to reminisce about his time on Omega, exactly. But since re-boarding the Normandy, noticing the ways he is different around Shepard, he finds that sometimes it’s necessary.

Going after Sidonis has been the first thing he’s done since re-boarding that made him feel like the turian soldier he used to be. Ruthless. Vengeful. Unbending. It’s also the first time he’s ever felt regretful about being that person. It’s a peculiar feeling, trying to map out the person you used to be alongside the person you are, figuring out whether there’s ever been such a thing as a tender vigilante; and he finds it keeps him up on the day they finally tracks Sidonis down, he and Shepard together, until he finds himself sitting in the mess, turning his old medal of valor over and over between his fingers, long after everyone else has gone to sleep.

Lost in such deep thought as he is, it’s a genuine shock when Shepard suddenly appears, smiling faintly, before him.

“You’re up late,” she says quietly as he grabs at the table and tries to get a grip on himself. “Or early. Hard to tell at this hour.”

“All due respect, Commander,” he rumbles, hoping to the spirits he doesn’t sound as rattled as he feels, “but where the hell did you come from?”

“Upstairs,” she replies with a quirk of her lips. “Didn’t hear the lift?”

“No.” He rubs at his face and cricks his neck in an effort to regain composure. “Lost in thought, I guess. Been standing there a while?”

“Thirty seconds. Not long.” She’s dressed casually; it doesn’t look like she ever went to bed, with her hair still tucked loosely away in a disheveled bun. Garrus starts to wonder whether she’d just happened to come across him or whether the meeting had been orchestrated when she brandishes a deck of cards and a bottle with two glasses from behind her back. “I kind of figured you’d still be up,” she admits. “You feel up to a few hands?”

The smile creeps over his face in increments -- that tenderness taking him over again. “You’re not tired?”

“Almost never.” The lie falls easily between them, each of them recognizing it for what it is with knowing half-smiles; and Garrus gives a beat to let the moment settle before beckoning at the chair across from him.

“I might not be very good company,” he warns.

“That’s all right. This might not be very good whiskey.” She tosses the deck to him and sets the shot glasses hard against the table; and silence falls between them the second she sits down, each of them speaking only to comment briefly on the game and to figure out who deals the next hand.

She’s surprisingly competent at Salarian Rummy, Garrus notices; and in the next moment, he’s annoyed with himself for assuming she wouldn’t be in the first place. Shepard’s not new to this interstellar rodeo, as he knows all too well; but despite that he’s younger than she is, he always feels like there’s _something_ he ought to know how to do better than she does, just because turians have been in the galaxy for longer. In no time he realizes that he’s still just caught up in the old military rhetoric that the turians are the most important species in the galaxy, to all exception. 

He should just accept by now that Shepard is the exception to pretty much everything. Trust the only person whose command he’ll comfortably follow to be able to beat him at Salarian Rummy.

Sitting here across from Shepard, playing cards -- this version of himself doesn’t align with the version of him that was so driven to take out Sidonis, until he looks at the fringes. Ever since Sidonis took out the rest of his crew, Garrus has felt responsible for the debt represented by the loss of those lives, even if he didn’t generate it. 

Shepard takes responsibility for her crew in the same way; that is certainly where he’d learned it. In the military, each turian was an individual, and each individual was a soldier: unimportant, meant only for the turian cause, regardless of whether that cause was just. Garrus had never been like that -- hence, C-Sec; hence, Archangel. But even when he’d prioritized his ideals, he’d never felt _responsible_ for the lives of any other beyond what was expected of him in the course of basic military leadership. 

If he once had a crew he had actually _cared_ about, it was because Shepard had shown him what such a connection could look like, and he’d emulated it.

And if Shepard’s influence had resulted in his crew, could it have also resulted in their deaths? Had he, in the process of choosing to trust a team, become blind to the possibility of corruption within his ranks? If Shepard started him down a path of greater sympathy, of mutual aid, of _softness_ , did she also instigate within him the instinct to trust Sidonis beyond the shadow of a doubt?

Or -- had he done that? Had he turned his back to the possibility of Sidonis’ betrayal? Hadn’t he vetted every single member of his crew -- and been bested anyway, after the fact? Hadn’t Sidonis turned on him under duress? Hadn’t he done it _after_ joining Garrus’ crew?

Had Sidonis turned on him -- had Garrus allowed his crew to die -- because he, Garrus, was an ineffective leader?

Somehow, he thought he’d have left all these questions behind after he shot Sidonis down. He thought he’d have achieved something like closure -- that, having avenged his team, he’d go back to feeling like he’d done his duty and could carry on with his life. But instead, he finds himself facing down the reality that killing Sidonis changed little. In fact -- given that Sidonis had turned on him under duress -- Garrus was now beginning to question whether killing Sidonis had even been just.

In the end, Garrus hadn’t shot him because his actions had resulted in the deaths of his team. In the end, he’d shot him because he was afraid of the same thing happening to someone else.

That reality sits in him. Festers. Feels wrong, somehow.

It’s the first time Garrus committed an action that he wasn’t sure advanced the cause of justice. He had felt firm in it; it had remained the right choice, and he was beyond relieved -- _grateful_ , even -- that Shepard had backed him up in what he had needed to do. He suspected that if it had been up to her, she would have turned him into authorities, even if the authorities couldn’t have done anything with him, given that his actions had been committed on Omega; and that’s what had convinced Garrus that killing him had been the right thing to do. He’d already taken out Harkin, the Blue Suns -- those more directly responsible for the loss of those lives. But the fact that someone as disloyal and subject to sway as Sidonis had proven himself to be would be let loose, to potentially result in the deaths of another vigilante squad… Garrus couldn’t abide that.

So his hand had been steady, his resolve unwavering, when he’d pulled the trigger once Shepard had stepped aside.

But that doesn’t mean it had been a just action.

Garrus prides himself on his integrity, regardless of his means. But integrity doesn’t look so clear from where he’s sitting anymore. He may have done his bit to ensure the sacrifice of fewer innocents, but that doesn’t mean for a second that ‘justice,’ if such a thing even exists, has ever truly been done by his hand.

He wonders how often Shepard feels the same way.

“You want to talk about it?” she asks, as though reading his mind.

He looks up suddenly at the sound of her voice. Shepard is opting for casual: watching her own hands deal in between moments of eye contact, her body language relaxed and open. Her tone is easy; she is clearly not ordering a response. Garrus feels, for the second time today, an overwhelming rush of gratitude toward her.

“I did what I went to do,” he replies quietly, after giving himself a moment to compose himself. “There’s nothing more to say.”

“All right.” Her tone is skeptical, but accepting, and isn’t that a summary of the woman herself.

It’s only about forty seconds before Garrus sighs and sets a card delicately down in the middle of the table. “Would you have spared Sidonis, in my position?” he asks suddenly, surprising himself seemingly more than he’s managing to surprise Shepard. “Even if it meant his release?”

Shepard seems to consider this as she tugs a card out from her own hand. “I can’t answer that for you, Garrus,” she says patiently.

“Try.”

Shepard looks at him. “I would have spared him. But that doesn’t make your decision the wrong one.”

This doesn’t quite compute for Garrus. “Why did you support me if you thought sparing him was the right choice?”

“I’m not you,” says Shepard. “I couldn’t make that decision for you.”

“Even when it meant a man’s life?”

“Would knowing that I found his death needless change how you felt?”

An uncomfortable silence falls as Garrus thinks this over. Each of them plays a card to fill the space. 

“I still feel his death was necessary,” he says eventually.

Shepard smiles at him, somehow kindly, and Garrus blinks at her. “That’s what I’m saying,” she says. “I’m not you. I wasn’t there with you on Omega. I can’t define ‘needless’ for you.”

Garrus stares; she holds his gaze. “You kept him talking on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She hadn’t bothered to hesitate before giving her answer.

“Why?”

“In case something he had to say might’ve changed your mind.”

“So you think I made the wrong call?”

“Not at all. I think it was the right call -- for you.”

“But you wanted me to change my mind about killing him.”

“I…” This, finally, stops Shepard. She stills; looks Garrus abruptly in the eye. “There’s nothing worse than being responsible for someone’s death and then questioning that decision,” she says gravely. “Do _you_ think you made the wrong call?”

“No.”

“Even though he felt guilty?”

“Even then.”

Shepard nods curtly. “I wanted that certainty for you.” She sets her card on the table. “And you have it. So I have no regrets about my conduct, either.”

Garrus continues to watch her. “How do you…?” He feels his head shake involuntarily. “For the first time, Shepard, I’m not sure I understand you. You don’t seem to have a set understanding of justice.”

Shepard puts her cards down on the table, then. “That’s a strong assessment,” she says gravely. “Why do you think that?”

He blinks, then throws his own cards down and reaches for his drink. “Well, Shepard, what _is_ justice to you? Answer me and we’ll see where we get.”

There is something in her smile that strikes Garrus square in the gut, and he almost immediately regrets his tone. “I’ll give you this much: I don’t think ‘justice’ is the most important consideration in how I conduct my affairs,” she says.

“So what guides you?” He sips his drink.

Shepard waves around the mess, as though to gesture at the ship. “Who owns this vessel?”

“Cerberus.”

“I use Cerberus’ resources freely. Does that seem _just_ to you?”

Garrus’ mouth opens and shuts. “Right,” he says, nodding slowly.

“You and I have something in common, Garrus: we both care about the ends more than the means. But for you, the ‘end’ has to be a just one.” Shepard falls into reflection; she stares into her glass for some seconds before lifting it to her lips and taking a prolonged drink from it. “Me? I’m still guided by a mission that I’m not totally sure is... just. I just don’t have the--” Her sentence breaks off; she clears her throat and shifts positions. “I don’t take the time to question it,” she finishes, more strongly. “All I can do is follow my gut about what feels right and wrong. I take a serious look at every individual action I take and figure out if this is worthwhile, on the balance. But ‘justice’ isn’t always a foremost consideration for me.”

“Huh,” says Garrus.

Shepard purses her lips and shifts uncomfortably. “Garrus, when I let Sidonis talk, I… think I wanted you to spend a minute in my shoes. I wanted someone else to have to figure out whether an action was still worthwhile, regardless of whether it was just.” She shakes her head and avoids his eye. “And I’m sorry for that. I shouldn’t have done it. It was selfish of me.”

“Sorry?” Garrus shakes his head hard and leans closer to her. “ _Selfish_? Shepard, what are you talking about?”

“I wanted an ally in whatever bizarre crisis of faith I’m in. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” She is obviously mortified; Garrus narrowly avoids taking her hand. “I tried to force your value system to look more like mine, and--”

“What? No.”

“--I shouldn’t have--”

“ _Shepard._ ” Then he _does_ set his hand over hers, if only for long enough to stop her from carrying on. “Stop. You were _right_.”

She blinks. “What?”

He wends his fingers together and flexes them over his stomach to prevent him from touching her for longer than he should. “I was just sitting here before you came in trying to figure out how to make sense of the fact that I don’t think shooting Sidonis was the _just_ thing to do.” He shakes his head. “Even though it was still the _right_ thing, even though I don’t _question_ what I did -- it wasn’t right because it was _just_. And everything you just explained to me…” He waves a hand. “What’s the word, Shepard? It’s still _worthwhile_? That brought the whole thing into focus for me. So, thanks.” He can only smile at Shepard’s bewildered blinking. “Thanks for having my back. Thanks for asking the questions I didn’t know how to ask. I’m grateful to you, Commander. Stop worrying so much.”

Shepard is staring at him, unmoving. “You haven’t corrupted me,” he tells her. “I learn a lot from you, and it’s never anything bad. All right? Thanks.”

A lifetime later, she blinks; sweeps her cards off the table and stares into them, and Garrus does the same, just to give her version of the action more meaning. “One of these days, I’m gonna lead you wrong,” she mutters. Garrus’ eye snaps to her ears, which are inexplicably turning red.

“You haven’t yet,” he promises; and they return seamlessly to their game, Garrus fighting a losing battle against the slow smile trying to spread over his face. “I see you have your own contraband liquor,” he says in an effort to distract himself, nodding at the bottle of whiskey.

“Well.” That bitter smile again. “Technically, I’m not Alliance either, so.”

Garrus blinks at her as she swallows and rearranges her cards haphazardly. “You deserve better than someone else’s agenda, Shepard,” he says after a while.

She shakes her head and refuses eye contact for longer than a fleeting second. “I don’t _deserve_ anything specific.”

“You’re wrong about that. You wanna talk more about this mission you’re on that you allegedly don’t take the time to question? Here I thought _I_ was struggling with _my_ sense of purpose. If you don’t wanna be allied with Cerberus, why the hell are you?”

“I may question the Illusive Man’s methods, but he happens to be right.” She gestures wildly around. “The Collectors do need to be eliminated. I’m stronger with their resources, and the Alliance isn’t gonna organize back in time for me to make a difference under their authority.”

“Who says it has to be you?”

She gestures at herself as though to say, _and yet here I am_. “Apparently, it does.”

“Shepard.”

“I was brought back for _this sole purpose_ , Garrus. Who am I to argue with destiny?”

He blinks at her. “Is this a joke?”

She gives a sad scoff. “I wish.”

Garrus’ heart is thick in his chest. “Fuck him,” he bites. “Fuck Cerberus. Let’s take the vessel and run -- do it our own way. Forget destiny. Let’s make our own.”

If he doesn’t manage to convince her, at least he manages to make her smile. “Sure,” she says, tone saturated with quiet mockery. “You disable the AI, I’ll eject the twenty-odd Cerberus employees out the airlock. We’ll set a course for the nearest free colony that might lend us three trillion credits. Go rogue. Easy as that.”

“Sounds good to me. Right after we finish this game?”

“Naturally. Say, doesn’t Cerberus have an army we should worry about?”

“Ah, sure, but since Sidonis is dead I’m not really busy anyway. Weren’t you just saying you were bored?”

“Now that you mention it. Why face certain death from two angles when we can face it from three?”

“That’s the spirit.” 

Her responding smirk is at once pained and hopeful, and Garrus beats back the image of Shepard’s lips crooked under his. 

“Fine,” he mutters under the weight of her gaze, setting his cards down in what may or may not actually be a rummy. “But just for the record, Shepard -- everything I did on Omega is because my time with you has proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that sometimes organizations just stand in the way of doing what needs to be done. Cerberus might well and truly be the best asset we have in this war, I hear you, but you say the word that you want to be rid of them -- rid of the crew, rid of the ship, even -- and I’m with you.” As they stare at each other, the tension is unmistakable. “We’ll find a way to do it ourselves. To hell with anyone who stands in our way. Just say the word that you want me to and I’ll pull the trigger -- or I’ll stand aside while you do, same as you did for me today. On that, you have my word.”

Shepard stares at him, her chest rising and falling with apparent effort. “You don’t owe me that,” she replies, slowly, intentionally.

“I owe you that and more,” Garrus counters. “I’m with you every step of the way, Shepard.”

There is something impossible, unreadable in her gaze.

“Thank you,” she manages eventually.

“Shepard,” he says only, voice sitting low in his throat; then he shrugs, at a loss for what else to say.

It may well be several minutes later when she is finally the first to break eye contact and stand.

“I should try to get a few hours’ sleep,” she says, voice breaking through some inscrutable rasp.

A smile flickers on Garrus face’, and he leans back in his chair, forcibly dialling back the intensity as well as he knows how. “So you should. Thanks for… uh ... checking up on me.”

“Hardly checking up on you, Garrus.” She sounds normal again, and she bends to start collecting the cards from the table. “Just a friendly game of rummy.”

“Right,” he agrees, nodding. “Which I clearly won.”

She furrows her brow and shoots him a look, circumspect. “Sure. We’ll ignore that your last ‘win’ was mostly random cards.”

“Too late to check that now, Shepard,” he replies, gesturing at the cards in her hands. “Can neither confirm nor deny.”

A grin flickers onto her face, and she gives a half-hearted, awkward wave as she ambles off toward the lift. “Get some sleep, Garrus,” she advises him, already half-hidden by shadow.

“Copy, Commander,” he drones back, watching her go.

He hears the lift doors open as he stretches and forces his stiff body to his feet; but as he starts to shovel the evidence of their evening back toward the kitchen, he realizes that the doors aren’t closing. He suppresses a smile as he looks to the lift’s direction, imagining Shepard on the other side of the wall, leaning against the lift door, her eyes shut tight as she tries to make a decision one way or the other.

He lets another few seconds pass. “You need something, Shepard?” he calls out eventually, voice cutting through some weighty stillness.

The only reply is another second of silence, the belated closing of the doors, and the sound of the lift as it shambles up to Deck 1.

Garrus grins to himself and does his damndest to put it out of his mind.

After all, it’s not as though he _really_ thinks he has a shot.

  


* * *

  


For someone who _really, truly_ doesn’t think he has a shot, he sure spends a lot of his time thinking about it.

In his defense, there’s something about high pressure, elevated-risk military scenarios that gets his blood boiling in just such a way, and he’s been in a lot of them lately, with little reprieve. In almost two years holed up at Omega, he’d only had a couple of women oscillating in and out of his group, and apart from a brief and ferocious affair with a turian commando who’d joined out of Aria T’Loak’s ranks just weeks before Sidonis’ betrayal, it’s been a long damn time since he’s gotten involved with anyone. 

In some respects he misses serving on a turian ship. The hearty competition between recruits is one of them. Humans, on the other hand, have _rules_ he doesn’t always know how to categorize; and so he doesn’t approach Shepard, not even for target practice, thinking she’s likely to frown upon fraternizing with someone under her command -- Alenko precedent notwithstanding.

 _It’s just a bad idea,_ he tries to convince himself when he finds his gaze lingering each time she walks in front of him in-armour, or holding a weapon, or standing within ten feet of him.

And he _really_ doesn’t think he has a shot. _Truly_ , he doesn’t. But, naturally, it comes up by some incalculable fluke anyway -- not least because he is an unaccountable idiot in key respects.

Being on his mind such as it is, the system of release on turian ships happens to come up in the course of regular conversation. The way disputes get settled by way of sparring; the way a _lot_ gets sorted out by sparring; the way the best way to assess an opponent or an ally or a teammate or a friend may well to be to get to know their _reach_ and their _flexibility_ \-- 

And then he stares out into the corridor, something like abject horror growing in his chest cavity while Shepard goes deathly silent beside him. 

Every muscle in Garrus’ body tenses, and he waits to be ejected directly out the airlock.

When he still isn’t dead, Garrus finally turns to look at Shepard to find her not remotely angry -- instead shaking her head as though _amused_.

“It sounds like you’re carrying some tension,” Shepard says, and stands to face him directly. “Maybe I could help you get rid of it?”

He _really_ doesn’t think he has a shot.

“I didn’t know you felt like sparring, Commander,” he says, hoping to the spirits that he is managing not to give away the rather more raucous conclusion his mind immediately leapt to.

“What if we skipped right to the tiebreaker?” she says; and the look on her face is enough to convince him that he’s not imagining this, after all.

So maybe he does have a shot, in the end.

  


* * *

  


Only a fool doesn’t take the shot he’s offered, but that still doesn’t make things _simple_.

Garrus is a skilled engineer. He understands how things fit together. One part goes into another part, and then it works. And it’s beautiful, when it works right. Enlightening. Fucking _life-changing._

As long as you can figure it out.

To his relief, Shepard seems to be in no hurry. He opts to be forthright about his uncertainty, and she’s more than understanding. So he takes a couple of weeks. Orders a decent bottle of wine.

And tries to calm the fuck down.

It’s not like he’s never done this before. He knows how to seduce a woman. Beat her in a competition, argue loudly and publicly, underpaint her abilities until she shows him up, and then pretend to be surprised when she shows up in his quarters and tackles him to the ground. Easy, right?

But even if human courting standards _weren’t_ different, Shepard is the usual exception to the rule. She is his commander as well as the woman he’s trying to seduce, and he figures that insulting her publicly is probably not going to work in his favour. Plus, he _genuinely_ feels incredibly vulnerable with her -- a definite first; that tenderness again -- and that’s… well...

He’d fall to his knees in front of her, all right, but he’s never been more afraid of doing anything in his life.

So if he takes a little longer than he intends before showing up in her quarters, it’s not because there’s all that much more research to do, once he figures out the basics. It’s much more about worry -- that she’ll reject him at the eleventh hour; that this is just casual for her, the way it could never be for him; that it’ll be too much work, that they’ll try it and fail, and that she’ll stop wanting him around when his usefulness proves limited.

“I want something to go right,” he tells her, when he’s tried everything he knows how to do, consumed by nerves, only for her to smile at him with unreadable intrigue. “Just once. Just--”

But then her hand sets against the scars of his face, as though to acknowledge his susceptibility, and he figures out that those eyes -- the ones that get him every time -- are giving him the answers he wants to every last question he has.

Garrus sets his forehead against hers, and he lets himself be vulnerable.

And then he takes his shot.


End file.
